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The Kansas Corporation Commission will begin holding work sessions next week in a move some believe will increase transparency.

The KCC regulates the electricity, transportation and oil and gas industries in Kansas and has to approve any requests for rate increases and monitor compliance. It also regulates a few water utilities.

Jesse Borjon, spokesman for the KCC, said the three commissioners will continue to have their traditional open meetings Tuesday and Thursday mornings to consider docket items, such as requests for rate increases, penalty orders for breaking rules and permission for utilities to begin or cease serving an area. They also will have meetings on Thursday afternoons to handle matters related to day-to-day administration that are open but unlikely to interest the public, he said.

The work sessions will be a chance to brief the commissioners on issues and answer their questions, Borjon said. They won’t have agendas, and minutes will be taken only if the commissioners take a vote on an issue before them.

“If there’s an item that they want to bring before these work sessions, they could,” he said. “I think it provides the commissioners an opportunity to engage on items that are of interest to the commission.”

David Springe, consumer counsel for the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, said the work sessions appear to be a sign the commission will deliberate more transparently. The meetings will be open to the public, giving a view into how commissioners think through their decisions, he said.

Public bodies don’t have to create agendas, according to the frequently asked questions section relating to KOMA on the Kansas Attorney General’s website. KOMA also doesn’t address what must be included in minutes, other than requiring that motions to go into executive session be noted.

Mike Merriam, a local media attorney who advises The Topeka Capital-Journal, said public bodies aren’t required to have an agenda for their work sessions and have to keep a record only if any votes are taken at a work session. He said the KCC’s plan raises some concerns about transparency, however, even if laws aren’t being broken.

“It’s plainly a dodge,” he said. “They’re trying to get away with secret meetings because they don’t expect the public to come to these.”

Senate Bill 10, introduced by Sen. Jacob LaTurner, R-Pittsburg, would have required public bodies to keep minutes of their meetings, but the bill died in the House Committee on Federal and State Affairs in May. The bill included an exemption for bodies exercising “quasi-judicial” functions, however, raising the question of whether it would have applied to the KCC even if it had passed.

LaTurner said the main objection to the bill wasn’t related to the minutes issue, but to placing limits on how much governments could charge to fill open records requests. He said he plans to introduce a similar bill next year.

“I think the vast majority of Kansas agree with me,” he said.

The issue of quasi-judicial functions came up last year in discussions about how KOMA applies to the KCC. The three commissioners approved a policy in late 2013 that allowed them to conduct some deliberations in private when they are behaving more like a judicial than a legislative body, such as when they are weighing testimony in a rate case. Discussions about setting policy must be done in public, and all votes must be public.

The KOMA issue arose from a rate case involving Howison Heights, a small Saline County water utility beset by financial and water quality problems. The commissioners approved a substantial rate hike to attempt to address Howison Heights’ issues, but set it aside when it came to light that the order had been approved using “pink sheeting,” a process that involved the KCC executive director or another staff member meeting with commissioners separately to collect votes.

Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor filed suit over the practice, and the KCC paid a $500 fine and called a halt to the practice. The court found the commissioners who had met privately at the time, Shari Feist-Albrecht and Mark Sievers, didn’t demonstrate intent to break the law because the KCC had allowed pink sheeting for years.

Of the three members serving on the commission at the time of the KOMA controversy, only Feist-Albrecht still is serving. Sievers resigned in December and was replaced by former state Sen. Jay Emler. Thomas Wright’s term ended in March and he was replaced by former state Sen. Pat Apple.